I was recently thinking of the future of organized, competitive water warfare. Once the people currently into the hobby either lose interest, lose the time to dedicate themselves to the hobby, or, uh, die, who will take the reins? The vast majority of people either want nothing to do with organized water warfare, or think that soakers are childrens toys and don't even want to participate in a soakfest. I have very few friends at school who would want to participate in the local water war I plan on hosting this summer. The people of the future won't exactly have the best quality guns, either. Old soakers, namely CPS, will be, and already are, ancient and more and more of these guns are breaking down every season. Buzz Bee toys is the only source of quality weaponry, but who knows where the company will be by the time we're leaving the hobby. People could turn away, Hasbro could continue to patent troll, who knows. Imagine a world where only Hasbro makes water guns and all the old Super Soakers are broken down. It would also be a world with no decent water warfare. The future may be one with less and less membership, fewer quality water guns, and, overall, a slowly dying pastime. Even if the future has members, who says they are dedicated enough to make their own decent guns, create websites to talk about water warfare on, and put together and host wars.This concerns me. At least for now though, water warfare has a small but dedicated group of people and the hobby is alive and well.

Last edited by Nitro123PG on Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Honestly I think the water warfare community is going to continue to grow. Hasbro keeps getting worse and worse and I am seeing more people just driving down the street with WaterWarriors guns. When that CPS patent expires in 10, 15? years I think we will see a vast jump in membership because of the increase in good guns. All of that assumes of course that Hasbro doesn't discontinue SS entirely from lack of sales before then.

Speaking of future water warfare, I've got a warstory that I am about half done with combining waterwarfare and sci-fi.

"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

It's good that you care about this issue, but I think your pessimism is unwaranted. We've never had a "big" community, but for every 1 person on here that is hardcore about water warfare I bet there are 5 who aren't on WWN, and thousands others who casually enjoy it from time to time. Every summer, kids all over the world are having watergun fights. Take a look at the Boy Scout thread! There are many more organized water wars out there than we, the community, know about, and many of them are much larger than the ones we participate in.

As for the state of water weapons, I would argue that our situation has never been better. We have a wider selection of guns than ever before, thanks to Ebay, modding, home mades, and new Water Warriors. One of our members just took a Hydrocannon, which we thought was mediocre at best, and made it shoot further than any stock gun except maybe the CPS 2000 and SS 300. That is huge.

What will the future of water weapons bring? I don't know. I doubt we'll see anything as powerful as the CPS 2000, but maybe we'll get guns like the Hydrocannon, or CPS 1000/1200/2100 that we can power mod. I am optimistic about this. Hasbro's patent on CPS/rubber pressure chambers will expire, and I bet we'll see some new CPS guns on WW's side.

And, to get back to the future of our community, I would argue that last year was the best year ever. We actually got together and had a community war, something we had been trying to do for the past 6 years.

Yeah, I guess I was way to gloomy on that post. I guess that is worst case scenario. The year that patent expires... it will be the best season in a long time. I bet Buzz Bee will make a CPS 1500 caliber blaster within 3 years of that patent expiring. Also, I never really though of people outside the community. People who like water warfare but don't take it online. I need to think about more than just the iSoaker members.

I know a few of my friends might be considered on the lower end of hardcore, this year they are probably going to attend the CSW with me! In the time that I have been here, I think the community has actually grown. The fact that the new guns aren't very good but water warfare is growing is very impressive, think of how it will be once good guns come about again! (I know Waterwarriors are good, but overall the average is brought down by SS). I can see why you could get pessimistic about it though, especaily during the winter where the real life water war stuff is down, it can get pretty gloomy.

"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"